


Inevitable and Impossible

by PsychoLeopard



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Gen, Introspection, Not A Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2020-02-07 12:17:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18620470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PsychoLeopard/pseuds/PsychoLeopard
Summary: Character study based on Avengers: Endgame. SPOILERS within.





	Inevitable and Impossible

**Author's Note:**

> SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS  
> I tried to keep it vague but don't read if you don't know how Avengers: Endgame ends.
> 
> I have a lot of feelings about Avengers: Endgame, as many of us do, and this is basically my first reaction word vomit (revised 3 times in 2 days before posting, at least). Some headcanon may have snuck its way in though I tried to keep it neutral. Please let me know if you see any errors.

Inevitable and Impossible

 

_You’re not the guy to make the sacrifice play_ , _to lay down on the wire and let the other guy walk over you._

 

That’s what the hero your dad ranted about, the one you looked up to as a kid and resented as a teenager because you knew you were never going to measure up, told you on the day you met, the first time you thought the world might be ending.

 

You don’t have to prove him wrong. You’ve _already_ proved him wrong. Only hours later, when you carried a nuke into a wormhole with no certainty of returning, of surviving.

 

Because sometimes the sacrifice play _was_ cutting the wire.

 

It wasn’t the first time you risked everything. It wouldn’t be the last.

 

When the world ended, when _half the universe_ ended and you somehow kept on breathing, you thought you were done. That having failed so spectacularly, you could finally rest and not have to save the world. It was already lost.

 

And yet they came to ask for help, those who had turned their backs, who had broken your trust and failed to listen when you needed them. They asked you to do what only you could do. And you tried to say no, you _did_ say no. You chose your family and your peace, but it kept niggling at you and gave you no rest.

 

You knew. If you did this, got back in the fight, accomplished the impossible, fixed your biggest failure (and you’re _good_ at fixing, almost as good as you are at breaking), you weren’t going to be able to stop. You were going to end up making another sacrifice play. You said you wouldn’t, that you would come home to your wife and daughter and idyllic cottage on the lake, but you knew better. You knew yourself, almost as well as Pepper did. You don’t know how to rest, how to set it aside.

 

You clung to the lie that you could.

 

The sorcerer supreme had told you, in bald, pitiless terms, that he would let you die for the sake of keeping the infinity stone safe. And then he handed it over, _offered it up_ , in exchange for a single life. Because out of fourteen million six hundred and five possibilities, there was only one way to win, and that way required _you_.

 

It wasn’t about the time machine. Or at least, not only about the time machine. Between Lang and Bruce and whatever other genius was left undusted, someone might have stumbled upon the answer to that question eventually.

 

When Thanos raised his hand to snap, you knew.

 

You had seen what the gauntlet did to the unstoppable gamma monster. You had seen what it did to the titan himself. There was no way you would fare better.

 

But it was a choice between yourself and the _entire universe_. You didn’t even have to think about it.

 

Instead, you were thinking of vectors and angles and altering your armor to match the specifications of the gauntlet and you were already wrapping your hands around the cursed gauntlet that might as well be the bomb to end all bombs and _cutting the goddamn wire_.

 

It worked. Never had success been so agonizing. But that wasn’t enough. The conditions for victory hadn’t yet satisfied, and there was still only one way for the good guys to win.

 

_I am inevitable_ said the mad titan who would destroy the universe.

 

Fourteen million to one feels pretty inevitable. But you know inevitable. Inevitable is self-made shrapnel to the chest. Inevitable is palladium poisoning from the only thing keeping you alive. Inevitable is alien invasions and frostbite in a Siberian bunker and oxygen starvation in a spaceship drifting a thousand lightyears from the nearest cheeseburger.

 

The thing about impossible odds is that by the very nature of probability, they _aren’t impossible._

 

_Don’t waste your life_ said the dying man in the cave with nothing left to lose, the one who let you crawl over his body to get over the wire.

 

Snapping your fingers was as impossible as building a suit of armor under the noses of your captors with a box of scraps, and as inevitable as the strike of hammer on metal after the swing.

 

_And I am Ironman._


End file.
